Garden

[tsavorite]

I have several knockout rose bushes....had them for a good long while now and I am DONE with it all!  All the thorns and cutting back the growth....the disease and bugs and so on.  Several of mine get rather big but this yr I was just out there cutting them down....what a huge job this is.  Instead of being joyful these things are making me miserable.

I need to find a flowering medium plant that has ZERO pickers/thorns....and is easy to care for as replacement.  It is in my front yard...I have a pretty much dead row of thorny reddish purple bushes (which I am getting rid of also) behind them is a row of boxwood bushes and then I had 5 knockout rose bushes.  

I think I could plant some low growing flowering plants to replace the red/purple thorny dead bushes....and I don't know what to replace the knockout bushes.

Suggestions? Ideas??  

The mood I am in I wish I could rip it all out and start all over from scratch expect for the large Christmas tree which is off to the side and looks great! LOL

[jlkz]

How about sedums: they only need to be cut down to the ground in November and will come up and spread in Spring.  Flower heads start out pale green, turn to mauve in September, and then deep purple. “ Autumn “ variety.

For beautiful dark lime green foliage that dies back on its own after the frost:  Solomon’s Seal.  The flowers are almost invisible: they appear in a single line down the under side of the blades.  Spreads out from walls and takes no maintenance.  Rhizome is close to the top of the soil and can be picked up and transplanted easily.

HTH

[Kachina624]

Along the walkway leading to my front door, I've planted a low "hedge" of carpet roses.  They bloom from now through the middle of October pretty much non-stop, require no pruning or dead heading and are not bothered by any pests.  I throw some Bayer Rose Food on them every 6 weeks in the summer and that's the extent of the maintenance.

I got these plants at Home Depot.  They come in a pink colored pot.  I see them there every year.

[bmorechick]

Tsavorite... I took two days off work to complete much needed yardwork after all those wind storms here in MD. Picked up branches, trimmed trees back and dug up the last of the four bushes in our front garden. Yep, they got ugly and misshapen over the years, one side alive, other side dead and I was done with trimming bushes.

We planted four small pencil hollys...they stay narrow and small and it takes two minutes to give them a flat top. In front of the porch, no more bushes...we planted phlox and I can’t wait until it spreads. On the other side, more phlox...low growing and spreads beautifully. I have it around back and its perfect year round. Maintenence free stuff for me. We are over it! We did rip everything out except the hostas. It took two seasons, but now we are done. Except for whats left of my 12 deceased leland cypress. Thats another year!  Believe me, I feel ya! Give me concrete and high rise...maybe one day.

[Snicks1]

@tsavorite, I dug my 6 rose bushes out last fall. For the same reasons you listed. So far, I have not replaced them with anything, they served as a division between my yard and my neighbor"s yard. So far, it's working out well.

[Elri]

@tsavorite

What about weigela?  Abelia is really a nice shrub to replace the roses. Beauty bush (kolkwitzia) is really lovely.

It mostly depends on your zone plus soil and how much sun the area gets.   

Would you consider lavender?   Full sun, drought tolerant.

Check out Russian sage - but it might get too big.  

Sedums are fabulous plants.  i second the person who mentioned them.

I love evergreens.  Different shades of green look so pleasing to the eye. 

Good luck

[JustJazzmom]

@tsavorite You do not mention where you live. I am going to suggest viburnums— pretty much pest free. Some are deciduous & some are evergreen.

Look at evergreen Burkwood ‘Conoy’ viburnum — they get about 4’ X 4’ at maturity. They will get berries in the fall if there are other varieties of viburnums in your yard that bloom at the same time as this one. 

For fragrant flowers try the deciduous Korean spice viburnum. 

Look at weigelias too — trumpet shaped flowers in late spring and they are deciduous. Some in the fall have their leaves turn burgundy before falling off. 

Great cultivars are ‘Minuet’, ‘My Monet’, a variegated leaf variety & look at ‘Midnight Wine’ or ‘Red Prince’. 

Look at any dwarf fothergillas — deciduous with whitish bottle brush blooms in early to mid spring. Their leaves turn orange, red & yellow in the fall before falling off. 

All these plants take full sun or part sun/shade. 

[tototwo]

I know what you're going thru -- I had a row of 5 red knockouts that curved around a corner of our house for 10 years.  They all got that nasty "rosette" disease and had to go.  I found I couldn't dig them out myself -- the roots went all the way to China and the thorns were killers.  I had to hire a tree service to dig them out.  Expensive!

I thought about that empty space for a year and finally decided to go shorter -- so I planted Gold Flame (?) spirea.  These have chartreuse foliage and dark pink blooms most of the spring and summer.  Don't grow very tall, don't need much (if any) pruning, and very colorful.

Thought I would miss those knockouts, but I don't.  Glad they're gone! 

[tsavorite]

Hello everyone and THANK YOU all for your ideas I really appreciate it!  I will look up all the suggestions posted here so far.

My husband is going to help me get the rest of the bushes out today....hopefully it won't be to bad and we can do it ourselves.  The thorns on several are so huge!  I am torn up from yesterday....just hacking them down.

I live in MI and this spot gets full sun....and I have quite a wide space to fill.  Soil is awful...hard clay...I have tried adding good soil in....thinking I need to do more of that once we get these rose bushes out today.  

I am thinking of using several of the plants mentioned here....what my home needs badly is color....something that blooms as I have the boxwoods some big rocks some stella doras and the large evergreen/christmas tree....the space where the knockouts are would be bare and then behind that against my house are some evergreen type bush that was put in when we moved in.  

There is enough room to add in several different things to fill it up....just need some color and must be able to handle full sun...not so great soil.

[mousiegirl]

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@jlkz wrote:

How about sedums: they only need to be cut down to the ground in November and will come up and spread in Spring.  Flower heads start out pale green, turn to mauve in September, and then deep purple. “ Autumn “ variety.

For beautiful dark lime green foliage that dies back on its own after the frost:  Solomon’s Seal.  The flowers are almost invisible: they appear in a single line down the under side of the blades.  Spreads out from walls and takes no maintenance.  Rhizome is close to the top of the soil and can be picked up and transplanted easily.

HTH

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@jlkz  I never heard of cutting sedums down, I have many and never do that, but maybe in your area it is to cold for them.